by Ron Jaworski
After another year of continuous discussion and planning, LeBeau had his new system drawn up and ready to present to the team. “These concepts were hard,” said Wyche. “You were asking players to do things at their position they’d never done before.” But after more than a decade as an NFL assistant, LeBeau had finally gotten a coordinator’s job, and he didn’t want to blow his chance. “I will always be grateful to Sam for what he did,” he said. “I came to him with these ideas, and a lot of other people would have shown me the door. I don’t think there were many coaches who would have agreed to devote significant practice time to prepare our defense in this new style of attack. We took some wrong turns and had some pretty ugly-looking defenses sometimes. But it was all part of the process to try and decide how far off the diving board we could go.”
Cris Collinsworth watched the scheme develop from the beginning. “We were dumb, young ballplayers back then and didn’t really know what was going on; kind of wrapped up in just what we were doing,” he said. “At practices we’d watch defensive linemen dropping into coverage but were too clueless to understand what we were seeing was so revolutionary. Three-hundred-pound guys don’t go backward very well to begin with!”
As I’ve already mentioned, innovations come about as a reaction to what people on the other side of the ball are trying. The creative timing and rhythm-based pass offenses of Don Coryell and Bill Walsh mandated a response from thinkers like Dick LeBeau. “We had to do something,” said Dick. “They changed the pass protection rules to help offensive linemen. And they moved the hash marks into the middle of the field. That meant the sideline was now a long way away, opening the passing game even more. I’ve always said that the sideline is a defender’s best friend—it’s never missed a tackle yet. That ‘friend’ wasn’t there much to help my people anymore.”
With so many of the game’s elements tilted in the offense’s favor, LeBeau believed that his best chance to stop opponents lay in emphasizing deception. Since defenses weren’t rushing more than the offense could block, LeBeau had to create the illusion of pressure. He wanted to force offensive linemen and quarterbacks to react to things that weren’t actually going to happen. “With the old pressures, quarterbacks kind of knew where to go with the ball,” Dick explained. “As soon as a defense would show one particular guy rushing, a receiver would break off his route accordingly, and the quarterback would get the ball out to him. So I’m thinking it would be nice to trap the quarterback and make him think a certain kind of pressure is coming early in the down. Then as things progress later in the down, we actually have an entirely different look. We want to trick them with a guy they’re not figuring on coming, or somebody who shows up in a place you’d never expect him to be. That’s the concept in a nutshell: You hold them by the nose, then sneak around and kick them in the tail—just like General Patton used to say.”
Back in the eighties, Cincy’s Zone blitz was mostly a third-and-long package. Unlike Buddy Ryan’s 46 alignment, which brought more rushers than the offense could block, the Zone blitz rarely sent more than five people after the quarterback. Because of the perceived pressure, quarterbacks were taken out of their rhythm and hurried their passes. NFL Network analyst Solomon Wilcots, who played four years in LeBeau’s system in the Bengals’ secondary, can explain it as well as anyone. According to him, “LeBeau’s concepts are much more effective in the 3–4. The fewer linemen you have, the more you can create the illusion of pressure. It’s the defense’s version of a Rubik’s Cube, trying to make quarterbacks figure out what they’re seeing. And they haven’t got all day!”
Remember when I mentioned earlier how Sid Gillman asked a college math professor to help him apply geometry to determine where his receivers needed to be in San Diego’s pass offense? Dick LeBeau is so intelligent that he calculated his defenders’ angles all by himself! “It just dawned on me that there’s a geometric concept to football,” he explained. “The game is played on a rectangle, and within that rectangle, the offensive players fit into multiple levels that force opponents to defend the whole field. Offenses were literally creating squares and triangles with their routes. I thought it might be a good idea to match those shapes with squares and triangles of my own. I wanted to put my people in areas where the offense was sending its players.”
That produced the second component that made LeBeau’s strategy so brilliant: the aggressiveness of its coverage. The Bengals, and later the Steelers, didn’t just sit back passively, as in traditional zones. Theirs was a proactive matchup zone incorporating man-to-man concepts. It was tailor-made to compete against an offense’s combination routes. You’ll recall those from Air Coryell: routes determined by both the location and distribution of receivers; how many receivers are aligned on each side of the formation; and whether they’re wideouts, tight ends, or running backs.
Wilcots was able to grasp the LeBeau system and its complexities partly because of what he had learned years before from my mentor, Sid Gillman. “When I was in high school, I went to one of Sid’s football camps in San Diego,” Wilcots recalled. “He let us sit in during night sessions he held with people like Brian Billick and John Fox. And all Sid would talk about was combination routes and how they stretched zone defenses.
“Combination routes are the backbone to every passing scheme, then and now,” he continued. “It depended on the combination read and where you were in coverage. That’s what Dick was referring to when he talked about ‘triangles.’ You’ve got three people working: the safety, the outside corner, and the inside linebacker, or nickel back. The nickel or even the dime backs become more like linebackers. The points of LeBeau’s ‘triangle’ are based on those three players.”
LeBeau didn’t school his players to defend specific areas. They did cover a receiver coming into their space, but they had to know which one it was before it happened. And they needed to know what route was coming, then try to break it up. As the defender moved to the ball, he had to take what LeBeau called the “intercept angle.” Everything with Dick is mathematical in nature. The proper angles allow leverage on the route so that the defender is in the best position to make the play.
“That’s what makes players love this defense so much,” said Wilcots. “We’d come in Tuesday morning and ask, ‘Hey, Coach, what have you got for us this week?’ We couldn’t wait to hear, because we knew we were going to get sacks, picks, and turnovers with his scheme. And the truly fun part of the defense is underneath, because that’s the spot in the defense a quarterback can’t read. He can read the deep safety, who’ll provide a clue about single or double coverage. But the quarterback can’t pre-read the underneath coverage. That’s where the illusion takes place. When a quarterback is intercepted, it’s to people he can’t see; people whose locations he can’t determine.”
It was here where LeBeau was especially unpredictable. Dick has always believed that you had to have one wild card in your defense—one guy who acts purely on his own instincts. This makes the Zone blitz even harder to contain, because the improvising player can pop up anywhere at anytime. In Cincinnati, it was David Fulcher, the 240-pound safety who killed me with those three picks in the ‘89 Chiefs-Bengals game. He was violating the tendencies of LeBeau’s defense, which is exactly what Dick wanted from him. Fulcher’s massive size kept him from being a top cover guy, but that same bulk was a real asset when he played near the line of scrimmage as a run stopper or blitzer. And that flexibility allowed LeBeau to blitz other players from odd angles or to crowd the middle against quick slants and hook patterns.
Sam Wyche was especially appreciative of LeBeau’s schemes in 1988 when the Bengals made it to the Super Bowl. “The Zone blitz was what won the game that gave us home field advantage,” he said. “We were playing in the final week of the regular season against the defending world champion Redskins. Our blitzes were a problem for them all day. The score was tied at the end of regulation, and in overtime we won it because Dick called the right play at the right time.”
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The call was a blitz up the middle from defensive back Barney Bussey, nicknamed the “little backer” by LeBeau because he was so tough inside the box. “Bussey was a helluva hitter; a safety as talented as our starters,” said Wilcots. “Because of Barney, Dick was able to make that call. The Redskins never saw it coming, and Barney forced their quarterback Doug Williams to fumble. We recovered, kicked the winning field goal, and secured home field for the playoffs.”
Rushers breaking through faster disrupted the timing so critical to Coryell-or Walsh-influenced offenses. And for Cincinnati, the Zone blitz’s finest moment came in Super Bowl XXIII. Through three quarters, the Bengals had held Bill Walsh’s powerful 49ers offense to a pair of field goals and still led 16–13 in the final minutes. “Up till then, we’d played pretty aggressively against them,” Wyche bragged. “The main reason we were ahead late in that game was LeBeau’s defense. The one thing I think we could have done differently was not go to the prevent defense so much on the last drive.”
Wilcots shakes his head when he thinks about how close the Bengals came to winning a world championship. “We were kicking their ass,” he said. “They couldn’t run on us, couldn’t throw. And on that final drive, we had them in a second-and-twenty. This was the pivotal play of the game. We had Jerry Rice doubled from the outside corner, with the safety rotating down. If we’d played it right, we would have had a pick. But after the snap, Ray Horton collided with Fulcher and Eric Thomas. Three Bengals got tangled up. Rice makes the catch and goes streaking down the field for twenty-seven yards. At that point, I knew we weren’t going to win. And what hurts most is that LeBeau called the perfect play! We had them right where we wanted them! Dick’s call was on the money; we should have picked it off and maybe even run it in for a score. Instead John Taylor catches the winning touchdown pass two plays later. If we’d just done what we were supposed to do, I’d have a Super Bowl ring on my finger right now.”
he Bengals won another division title in 1990, but after a disastrous 3–13 season in ‘91, Wyche and his staff were fired, including LeBeau. Dick didn’t have to wait long for a job offer, though. After more than twenty years in Pittsburgh, Hall of Fame coach Chuck Noll was retiring, and successor Bill Cowher needed a new secondary coach. Dick soon joined a defensive staff that included future head coaches Dom Capers (Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans) and Marvin Lewis (Cincinnati Bengals).
LeBeau could not have teamed up with a more like-minded group of coaching colleagues. At one time, Cowher had been Cleveland’s defensive-backs coach, and Capers had served in the same capacity for New Orleans. Cowher trusted his assistants to put the unit together while he acclimated himself to head coaching responsibilities. “I probably wasn’t as involved in the off-season with the defense, trying to keep my hand in everything else, so I left matters to Dom, Dick, Marvin, and the others,” he said. “I could do this because of the stability of our staff.”
Cowher’s coaches inherited a defensive squad receptive to their new ideas. “Before LeBeau and Capers got to Pittsburgh, we’d run a fairly complicated defense ourselves with Rod Rust as coordinator,” said Hall of Fame cornerback Rod Woodson. “Rust had a matchup zone where you really had to understand football and change on the fly in game situations. We had the same responsibilities with the Zone blitz. What Rod did for us was give us a baseline for how to think on our feet. So when LeBeau introduced this new defense to us in minicamp, we said to ourselves, ‘We can handle this,’ because of what Rod Rust had already taught us. Even though these concepts were Dick’s ideas, he understood his role within Dom Capers’s defense. Dom was the coordinator. Dick deferred to him on all decisions, and whenever anything new was put in, it was Dom who installed them.”
Capers had been tinkering with various blitz packages, going all the way back to 1984 when he was defensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Stars in the now-defunct United States Football League, which played three seasons (1983 through 1985) before folding. “I then took these ideas with me when I went to New Orleans, because we had the best defense in the USFL,” he stated. “In ‘91 the Saints had the top-ranked defensive unit in the NFL, so I knew it could work anywhere. Dick had been doing his thing in Cincinnati, so when we came together with Pittsburgh in ‘92, we combined our ideas. We both were steeped in the 3–4, so that made it easier. Linebackers are just more flexible than linemen. They’re more used to dropping into coverage. It really is the best defense for these types of pressure schemes.”
LeBeau quickly bonded with his defensive backs, and it’s easy to see why. He was one of them; a kindred spirit. “Dick thinks about his defenses from the secondary’s point of view,” noted safety Carnell Lake. “He knows how crucial their role is because he played there himself. I think that’s why defensive backs relate to him. A lot of coordinators coach defense by building their foundation on the defensive line first. But I always felt LeBeau made sure he had the secondary’s responsibilities in place, then would work his way to the front.”
Dick was well aware of the heightened stress and strain put on all defensive backs. “Secondary positions carry added responsibility,” he maintained. “If a lineman gets trapped or makes a false step, he’s still got linebackers or DBs who can atone for his error with a good tackle. If a linebacker misreads a play, the ballcarrier can find the gap and break one, but there’s still a secondary guy behind him to make a saving tackle. But if a defensive back falls down or goes the wrong way, there’s no one behind him to bail him out. The ramifications of the secondary’s mistake is always greater.”
I’ve known Bill Cowher a long time. He and I were teammates with the Eagles in the early eighties. He had his own beliefs, his own system, and for him to put complete trust in new coaches with their unconventional methods was a gutsy move. “You talk about Bill Cowher, who was a real good defensive coach in his own right,” remarked Bill Belichick. “He basically turned that defense over to LeBeau and bought into Dick’s system. And that’s hard for a defensive coach to do, but it’s also hard to argue with what they’ve done with it since.”
Cowher’s decision was made easier because he saw how quickly Dick built rapport with his players. Retired running back Merril Hoge, my longtime partner on the ESPN NFL Matchup show, was with LeBeau for two seasons in Pittsburgh. “I never saw him belittle anyone,” he said fondly. “He treated everyone with respect, even when mistakes were made, so guys would never want to let him down. That would be like letting down your own parents.”
Dick’s fatherly approach earned him the nickname “Coach Dad,” but in 1992 he must have been a concerned parent when it came to Pittsburgh’s defensive inconsistency. “We didn’t have anybody on our line who could create real pressure on the quarterback,” admitted Hoge. “It had to be done schematically. Dom, Marvin, and Dick all agreed something needed to be done, so Dick showed them how he could overload against one side of the offense by bringing more guys. In desperate moments, you often react and do stupid things. But sometimes you come up with something that changes the game, the way the Zone blitz did. It also comes down to whether you have the personnel who can intellectually handle the scheme. Our guys could do it.”
“Dick taught his X’s and O’s in a way players could really understand,” said Lake. “He took something that, from the outside looking in, might have appeared complicated. But he made it so simple for the players that they bought into it wholeheartedly. It just made sense, and there wasn’t a lot of confusion when the plays were called. Everybody knew what they were supposed to do.”
Lake is currently an assistant coach at UCLA, his alma mater, and he sounds like one when asked to explain why the ‘92 Steelers’ new scheme caused opponents headaches: “The Zone blitz stretched the range where offensive linemen had to block. Instead of just focusing on the front four and linebackers where they could make adjustments fairly easily, now they had to look sideline to sideline when it came to potential blitzers. Before the Zone blitz, teams could bring out four wides and mul
tiple routes, because they assumed the defense would have to spend extra manpower covering those receivers. They figured they could protect pretty well under those conditions. But with nickel and dime DBs as possible blitzers, that forced offenses to eliminate the four-receiver package. They had to put the tight end in the game and keep a back in to help block. Now they only had three receivers running routes, and the advantage flipped to the defense.”
A system is only as good as the athletes who play in it, and in Pittsburgh LeBeau inherited a huge talent upgrade from what he’d had in Cincinnati. Solomon Wilcots came over to the Steelers that first season to help Dick break in the Zone blitz. “We had a lot of good people in the Bengals secondary,” he said, “but our line and linebackers—except for nose tackle Tim Krumrie—were solid but not great players. The Steelers had, and would soon be getting, a lot of stars to plug into Dick’s system. You start with [Greg] Lloyd, Woodson, and Lake. Once they added people like Chad Brown, Kevin Greene, and Levon Kirkland, things really took off with their Zone blitz.”
hen I came to the Philadelphia Eagles in 1977, my coach, Dick Vermeil, always cited our division rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, as the best-coached and most talented team in our conference. It was our goal, he insisted, to become their equals, then surpass them. If we could do that, Dick told us, we could beat anybody. And darned if he wasn’t right, because within three years we became NFC champions by knocking off America’s Team in the 1980 conference title game.
Similar conditions existed for the Steelers when Bill Cowher took over in ‘92. “The Buffalo Bills were the best team in our conference, and that’s who we had to beat,” he reflected. “We needed to figure out how to match up against a Bills team that ran three-wide-receiver formations. What could we do with the personnel we had to make things more disruptive?”